He was concentrated on his wife—she could hardly doubt his sincerity. He clapped his hands to his sides and went whirling up as his wife Catrin had done; he did exactly as he was told. Gael released the binding spell from the lance, and Catrin O’Quoin went limp in her husband’s arms. He carried her in a darting movement, nothing like the flight of a bird, and went over the old wall to the west of Silverlode. Gael rode out, tense and ready for tricks, but there were none. There was a clear view out of the town, and she saw the pair dip down over the edge of the high ground, hovering above one of the roads to Hackestell.
“Captain!”
Ensign From cried out behind her. She had come from the Commissariat roundhouse, from the cellars underground; she supported Lady Malm, and Shim Rhodd had left the tethered horses and come to help her. Gael was shocked by the sight of the prisoner: Lady Malm could barely speak, she was half-conscious, dirty, in disarray, all her fine clothes stripped away except for a few petticoats. Quite to Gael’s surprise, none of this seemed to be the lady’s greatest care. “My fleece,” she whispered piteously. “Where is my fleece?”
Gael looked at Ensign From, who shrugged, and showed the Captain the richly worked piece she held under her arm, a once-white fleece that had suffered along with its mistress in the cell below Silverlode. The edges were marked by a curious branding, in a decorated Eildon script with which Gael was not familiar. “We found the lady sheltered with it,” From said to Gael, in quiet aside. “Of course we did not leave it behind.”
Gael now recognized this object as the fleece she had seen the
first night in her dream. She was not sure what to make of the lady’s fierce attachment, but now was not a time for questions.
“Put the poor lady in the carriage,” she said. “Stay with her, Ensign From.”
“I have the medicines and comforts Mistress Cluny made up,” said From. “Captain, there’ll be trouble bringing out the old lord …”
There was a confused roar from the Commissariat roundhouse; Ensign Bruhl came out first into the morning sunlight, then Wennle, heaving along the struggling figure of the old lord, his master. He spoke to Lord Malm, doing his best to soothe him; he was assisted by a stranger, a heavily built young man, another prisoner, who held Lord Malm by his left arm. Shim Rhodd went to help. Malm struggled fiercely, but he was weak and had some kind of leg wound. At last Gael dismounted, tied up Ebony in the charmed circle with Sergeant Breckan.
“Sergeant,” she said, “this will soon be at an end. You have done what you were asked. Pray you hold out a little longer.”
“Why have you done all this?” he demanded. “For that mad old man who treated his kedran escort like dirt?”
“I am his kedran escort!” she answered. “I know my duty. And I know my duty to Coombe Village, which I promised to serve well. I look to see more than the lord and lady, Sergeant Breckan!”
“What else?” he asked.
“Their horses, from Coombe, together with the Malms’ saddlebags. Along with some hundred royals in gold that the lord carried.”
He hung his head. Gael strode over and confronted Lord Malm, who was a fearful sight, purple in the face, his mouth flecked with foam, his eyes red and rolling.
“Lord Malm!” she said loudly. “You are rescued! Peace! Pray you be still!”
The old man checked in his struggling and stared at her, panting loudly. Then it seemed that he knew her and this set him off again.
“Med—Meddoc!” he growled. “Damned Chyrian pack … .
Stink of the midden! Dare to lay hands on us! Awake! To arms! The Hunters to the rescue!”
Gael raised a hand and bound him into stillness where he stood.
“He should be ashamed, this lord!” burst out Ensign From. “You have woven this whole web to rescue him and his lady, Captain.”
“Oh, he has had too much to bear!” cried Wennle. “My dear lord—see, you are free! I swear he will come to his right wits …”
“Let us have him in the carriage,” said Gael. “You too, Master Wennle.”
She looked at the young man, the other prisoner, who had assisted with Lord Malm. He was pale faced and his hair was black; he wore a grey tunic and over it a scholar’s gown. He was looking at her strangely—with awe? with fear or admiration?—watching the blue spark that lighted her lance’s tip.
“Are there other prisoners below ground?” she asked.
“No, Captain,” he said. “I was being held for ransom alone, till these noble folk were brought in.”
He bowed his head to her and said:
“My name is Tomas Giraud, of Lort. I am a scribe.”
“You will come out with us,” she said. “The old lord must be placed in the carriage …”
This difficult action was performed without magical assistance; Lady Malm cried out her lord’s given name, “Mortrice!” in a faint high voice. Gael said to her troop, cryptically:
“Draw together for a long lifting!”
The ensigns took up positions on either side of the carriage. Bress drew his horse alongside the two greys in the shafts and soothed them; Shim Rhodd rode close behind the carriage, leading Wennle’s horse. Under the cover, the old steward and the scribe, Tomas Giraud, sat with the poor Malms, propped on pillows.
Gwil Cluny prepared to mount his pony and join the group, but Gael held up a hand to him.
“Captain!” called Ensign Bruhl. “I pray you, come out with us all!”
“Gwil and I will come a little later …” said Gael Maddoc.
She prepared the spell carefully and deliberately—walked right round the carriage and its attendant riders, uttering to herself the marking formula. Then she walked to the Roundhouse, went up three steps, and stood there side by side with Gwil, looking around at Silverlode. She saw all the men and women who followed the Wild Boar stock-still in strange attitudes or fallen in heaps, and she felt a deep distaste for her work. She called loudly:
“Be ready!”
Then she raised her lance and uttered the words for a long lifting. There was an immediate, loud crackling in the air overhead, and a cloud of sparkling blue mist settled over the place she had marked. It hung there for as much as thirty pulse beats; Gael thought of Luran’s words about bringing the Halfway House down in the midst of the city of Krail. The mist cleared slowly; the carriage, together with eight human beings and seven horses, had gone, hopefully to the chosen field behind the Halfway House.
“I must do this!” she said to Gwil. “The Eilif lords have brought us so far and will not desert us now.”
“Yours to command, Captain,” said Gwil wryly.
“Then fetch Badger Breckan to me, from our charmed circle just there,” she said. “Put our shield upon him. Loose the circle entirely—our two horses should stand here by the steps. We will leave quickly.”
Gwil Cluny did as he was told; Gael had always a thread of anxiety for her horse, Ebony, but he was taking it all quietly. Badger Breckan stood at the foot of the steps with the shocked look of those who had seen powerful magic done.
“What more d’ye want, Captain?” he panted. “I’ll do my best with the horses and the gold.”
“I will go in and parley with your master,” she said. “I must speak to Corvin Huarikson.”
“No!” he said. “No, I’ll not betray …”
“I will speak with him!” said Gael Maddoc. “I’ve harmed no one here today, have I, Breckan? Trust me! Lead us in!”
He stared into her eyes, then made his decision and walked past her, up the steps and into the Roundhouse. She and Gwil followed him closely into the old high-domed hall; a young servant
boy who had been watching behind the door ran off. It was dark after the sunlit yard: the tiled roof, with its heavy beams, had been mended a little over the years. There was an arrangement of shutters letting in the yellowish daylight. Gael strode to the very midst of the round hall, taking in the shadowed gallery, the door to the old kitchens. This was the scene of the Bloody Banquet of Silverlode. A long table stood before her, with a red cloth, and she remembered bunches of evergreen set out five summers past by the Memorial League—the women of the Rift.
Gael made out two, three figures seated at the table, with food and dishes on the red cloth. She had time to single out the leader, Corvin Huarikson or “Tusker Lovill, the Wild Boar,” as he called himself. Then there was a single note high in the air, like a plucked harp string, and the air burned green. The shadowy figures at the table rose up, their heads grew and writhed: instead of hands, they held up huge claws; jaws opened upon long fangs.
“Yield or you will die!” roared out the Wild Boar in his monstrous disguise. “I am empowered in this place!”
At the same moment, Badger Breckan shouted:
“Lord! Stop and parley! They’re full of magic!”
His master gave a slow, thunderous sound of rage and came out over the long trestle table with a bound. Gael made a small circling movement with the tip of her lance and uttered a few short words of unbinding. The monster, with a mighty, boar-like head and sharp tusks, fell to the dusty floor of the Roundhouse. The spell was broken: a giant warrior of Mel’Nir scrambled up again: “Obrist Hem Lovill,” as she had first set eyes on him by the crossroads. His fury was real enough.
“There’ll be a harsh reckoning!” he growled. “Badger—?”
“Hem Lovill, speak with me!” said Gael.
“And what are you, kedran?”
“I am the one empowered here!” she said. “And by the Eilif lords of the Shee. Will you talk, or should I bind those monstrous witch masks upon the heads of your two friends, yonder, bind them so that they never come off?”
He glanced back at the two maskers behind the table, with the heads of a bull and a bear. The fight went out of him, and he turned back, saying:
“Pray you, remove the spell, as you did with me. I’ll parley.”
She moved the tip of her lance twice more, carefully directing it and repeating the words. The two maskers were revealed as young women, one dressed as a battlemaid.
“Hem Lovill,” said Gael Maddoc, “or rather Corvin Huarikson. Years have passed since your father died in this place. I do not doubt you have suffered unjustly for his deeds—but your honor is your own. Leave this brigandry—or by the Goddess, with or without my witness, the Rift Lords and the men of Hackestell will soon fall upon you. Have you no land in the Eastmark?”
The Young Boar bitterly resented having to hear this or reply to it, but he said:
“I have a free company to feed and clothe!”
“Then put your trust in the Shee!” said Gael earnestly. “Remain in Silverlode and guard the road honestly. Ask the Eilif lords how you may serve them, at mining perhaps … any payment from them would be more certain than this robbers’ life”
“How will I come to these lords?” he asked. “O’Quoin and his wife have flown away, so I hear.”
“Ride with a few followers to the Black Menhir by Rieth’s Rest,” said Gael. “Or to the top of the Green Fort, further north. Ask for an audience with the Shee—I am their servant, and I will speak for you.”
“Captain,” said the big man reluctantly, “I have forgotten your name.”
“I am Gael Maddoc, formerly in the service of Lord Maurik of Pfolben,” she said.
“You are very bold,” said Corvin Huarikson, smiling for the first time.
Gael saluted him and nodded to Gwil. They marched straight to the open door, but someone, whether the Boar himself or one of the women, tried some last trick. There was a noisy crackling in the air and a barrage of lights, floating flames. Badger Breckan interposed himself with a roar:
“Stop that! She can strike us down! Let it be, Tusker, for the Gods of Blood, let it be!”
Gael shouted to Gwil through the spreading chaos; they raced out and vaulted into their saddles like heroes of old time. They rode breakneck out of Silverlode, leaping over entranced
soldiers, women. The rickety gates were opened wider by her shouted spell and the twitch of her lance, then slammed shut behind them. They reined in a little and Gael said, panting:
“We’ll free the boy …”
There he was, slumped over his pony’s neck. When Gael removed the spell, he blinked at her and asked sleepily:
“Da? Are you there? What’s doing?”
“You must not go in to Silverlode for another half hour or so,” said Gael.
“My Da!” he said fearfully. “What have you done with him? Why would he leave Goldheart, his horse, yonder?”
“What is your name then?” asked Gwil Cluny.
“I’m Alwin Breckan!” he said proudly.
“Your father has come to no harm,” said Gael Maddoc, smiling a little. “I suspect he will soon come out and fetch you.
“Mind what I said,” she went on, moving away. “Take my word and do not go in the gate until you hear a great commotion there in about one half hour … the time it takes the shadow of that tree, yonder, to move as far as the grey rock.”
So they rode swiftly away from Silverlode in bright sunlight, leaving Badger Breckan’s young son staring after them.
“We are both in good heart, my lord and I!” said Lady Malm, smiling. “Depend upon it, Gael Maddoc!”
The lineaments of the lady’s proud, handsome face had not changed. It was still possible to see in her the same woman who had treated Gael and others so ill. Yet now she was smiling and pleasant. Gael thought of telling it all to Druda Strawn, one day, as a kind of miracle.
Gael looked from a high window in the Halfway House, in the special rooms kept for noble guests. Down below there lay a fair round field, where no crops were planted, where the grass grew high and green, intertwined with wild flowers. It was clearly a blest round, or a cantreyn, a place for dancing and rituals—and a place for magic. In this round field, the precious caravan had landed, by magic, just as it had been planned,
carrying the Malms and the others. The carriage from Silverlode still stood there among the wild flowers: Gwil Cluny and a stable boy were just beginning to draw it away, to prepare for the final part of the journey.
In the fine room where Lady Malm had spent four days recovering from her ordeal, a slim, dark girl was going about finishing Lady Malm’s packing. This was Lyse Cluny, Gwil’s cousin, perhaps his sweetheart, and Gael saw that the simple addition of a lady’s maid to the original party out of Coombe might have worked wonders with her ladyship’s disposition. In the next door chamber, they could hear the rumble of Lord Malm’s great voice and the sound of his laughter, then the sharper tones of Wennle, preparing his master for the road.
Everything, she conceded, had worked out very well. If she was still untrusting and watchful, it was because of all the magic, the stress, the responsibility. At least the money was more or less right for Coombe and for all those who had been enlisted to help in the action.
It had been a good moment, she admitted to herself, when one of the Wild Boar’s men and the young lad, Alwin Breckan, rode into the stableyard on the second day after the rescue, leading the three Coombe horses and the handsome sorrel of Tomas Giraud, the scribe. All the saddlebags were full to the last thread: there was Lady Malm’s jewel box, untouched, and two purses of gold …
There had been a fond leave-taking on the morning of the third day: Ensign From and Ensign Bruhl received ten royals from the Malms and rode off back to Nordlin at the head of the Rift.
Bress Maddoc and Shim Rhodd, true sons of Coombe, had ridden home to the village carrying gold for the reeve, plus two royals each and a personal letter from Lord Malm thanking the reeve for “the work of the special escort troop led by Captain Maddoc.” Bress and Shim had the task of telling the reeve, privately, what had taken place. Gael expected a great saga would come of it. She sent fond words to her mother and father but could not tell them when she would be home again—perhaps at the year’s end.
“So fine … fit for a prince!”
The voice of Lyse brought her back. The little maid and Lady Malm had unfolded on the bed a package wrapped in pale silk that had also come from the saddlebags. It was full of swaddling clothes and fine wrappings—fit for a royal child. For now, at last, the reason for the Malms’ journey to the court of King Gol was known. The family of Malm belonged to the knightly order of the Hunters, led by Prince Borss Paldo, and Lady Malveen of Malm was a midwife.
In the Palace Fortress by the Dannermere, a young princess of Eildon was soon to give birth: Elwina Paldo Duaring, wife of Prince Rieth, the King’s nephew and heir to Mel’Nir’s throne. Yes, certainly, the healers and midwives of Mel’Nir would be attending the Princess; there was an element of discretion about the visit of the Malms. Perhaps Princess Elwina would like to see a familiar face. Perhaps an Eildon midwife with a knowledge of magic appropriate to her calling would be a good person for the princess to have at her bedside in a foreign court.
The Eildon fleece Lady Malm had been so loath to leave in Silverlode—it belonged to this part of her equipage. Gael had not asked, but she was sure it held some Eildon magic. It lay there on the bed, holding pride of place among the young prince-to-be’s clothes, rendered snowy white and clean by the touch of some small spell, and marked with the Eildon script that Gael could not read. It was a fine piece, and made her wonder about the only Hallow the Druda had not properly described to her, the Fleece—of Lien, it must be, for all the other countries, save Athron, had their Hallows named, and Athron, of all the countries of Hylor, did not have a long magical history. Gael, looking at Lady Malm’s fleece (which it seemed the lady had taken some care
not
to describe to her), wondered if the Hallow Fleece, like Mel’Nir’s Lance, the Krac’Duar, was considered so sacred that it was wrong even to speak aloud its name. Whatever the case, it was clear that it, too, was missing, along with the Lance and the Chyrian Cup.
She dutifully admired the fine baby clothes, then excused herself and went out onto the gallery. At the foot of the stairs stood a tall, well-built young man in a dark green tunic and a decent scholar’s gown, trimmed with plum velvet: Tomas Giraud
in his best clothes. She was pleased to see him; he was a serious young man, and she could not doubt his honesty.
This Tomas was by his birth a Lienish man; his parents had crossed the border into Mel’Nir the year Lien had become a kingdom, almost fifteen years past now. From Lort his family had retained their Lienish connections, and done much business for their old country. Tomas had told her promptly how he had come to be imprisoned in Silverlode. He had been traveling on a private but not especially secret errand for a rich man out of Lien. In fact, for Lord Auric Barry, whom he had planned to meet at the Halfway House. His task, for which he was to be well paid, had been to purchase a book. This was a true Book of Light, an illuminated sheaf of manuscript, listed in the scrolls, and owned by a master scribe and collector, Nostris of Rift Kyrie. The original makers of the marvelous book were scribes out of Lien, and their work told of the Lands of Hylor and its rulers before the Farfaring, the coming of the Men of Mel’Nir.
The purchase had been completed and the price paid, some at once and some with a bond signed by Lord Auric and his factor, Tomas Giraud. There was no thought of robbery: but since the book was precious, Tomas had arranged not to carry it himself—a merchant caravan with a sturdy escort brought this book of light,
The Elder Kingdoms;
up to the plateau along with their other goods and were to deliver it to Tomas and to Lord Auric at the Halfway House. In fact, this last had already taken place—the young lord had received the book even before he knew the fate that had fallen upon his factor. For indeed Tomas, on his way to the meeting place, had been seized near Silverlode by ten or more of Huarikson’s henchmen. They took his remaining gold and his horse and flung him into their underground prison. He had not been able to send word to the Halfway House before the Malms were brought in and imprisoned nearby.
So the book was never in danger. Gael asked if Lord Auric was a collector of such things? Tomas smiled and said that
The Elder Kingdoms
had been purchased as a gift, and Gael learned for the first time of what would take place in the spring, in one of the older kingdoms. The young Queen Tanit Am Zor, one of
the paired Daindru queens of the Chameln lands, was to be married in the spring. Tomas was not even sure where the ceremony would take place—in the Chameln’s fabled city of Achamar or in the beautiful city upon the plains to the south, Chernak New Town. The bridegroom, yes, it was a lord out of Eildon, only a year or two older than the bride. It was Count Liam Greddaer, great-nephew of the Duke of Greddach, far famed indeed for a collector of all kinds of rich and curious things, on his wide acres at Boskage. He was sure, Tomas confided, that the politics of the match were enlightened. Raised up as the young queen’s consort, a noble from Eildon, the ancient founder of the land of Lien, would moderate the fanatic hatred of the Brotherhood for the Land of the Two Queens.
Gael was surprised. In the four years she had been deep in the Southland, she had heard little of Lien and the grimly changing style of its government. Certainly, the Druda had hinted a little of this, that day she’d ridden to his house, begging help to write the Bretlow letter, but at least in Coombe, she had seen nothing of any rising Lienish influence—indeed. Ensign From and her terrible manners had come as a complete surprise to her, a revelation, and an unpleasant one. Bruhl had since confided that Lord Harel From had set his daughter to training as a kedran in part as tonic for the dangerous manners she’d brought home from Lien’s court: for she had returned not with the polish of a court lady as he had desired, well versed in the social graces, art, and poetry, but rather with a dogmatic, almost angry poise, full of lecturing and bitter words against the freedoms allowed to Mel’Nir’s women—manners most unsuitable to a Rift Lady who must manage a kedran guard when she came to rule her own house, along with a household of women who had never questioned their right to work alongside the house’s men.
In Lien, the power of the Brown Brotherhood was still growing. Age had settled on Lien’s king’s shoulders, and in his weakness, the Brown Brotherhood had found their strength.
To a Chyrian woman like Gael, it was an unwieldy puzzle. She had never thought to travel to far-off Lien. Its fine ways and abhorrence of kedran training had set her deep against it. These
things were bad enough without its influence and manners penetrating Mel’Nir’s borders.
Yet now, looking down the steps at Tomas Giraud—his warm, thought-filled eyes and his fine mouth—even knowing him for a man of Lien, Gael found herself thinking:
I have found a friend. One who understands …
A scribe and a kedran! She had to smile. No one she knew in Coombe would call it a natural pairing. Yet she went swiftly down the stairs, her heart foolishly aflutter, and she said:
“Are you ready to lead the way?”
“No,” he said, with a grin. “Lord Auric is tasting a flask of white grape-of-greys from Keddar Grove.”
Gael looked into the great hall of the Halfway House and beheld the party of the young Lienish lord at his midday table by the Eastern fireplace. She recalled his efforts, more or less successful, to find out all that had taken place at Silverlode: what had led up to this magical intervention?
Lord Auric had not made so bold as to approach the Malms themselves when they first were flown to the Halfway House—his henchman, Captain Tally, had approached the two kedran ensigns, Bruhl and From, making it known that he was an army healer. Then, when he did not learn enough of the rescue from the Malms, Lord Auric tried again when Gael rode into the Halfway House with Gwil Cluny. This time he used his female companion, Mistress Hestrem, one of the most worldly creatures Gael had ever met.
She had spoken very kindly to Gael Maddoc with hints of “kedran love”—and though Yolanda Hestrem was a voluptuous beauty, Gael found herself ill chosen. She remembered how she had been offered the favors, in Aghiras, of her virile guardsman, Jazeel, and decided that she must be “a lover of men,” as the kedran had it. Yet she shared some food and wine with the fair Yolanda, and she proved a pleasant companion. She spoke of her home in a district of the great city of Lindriss-on-the-Laun, in Eildon, where her father had been a fencing master and her mother had run a bakery. Gael deliberately gave her a truncated account of the Malm’s rescue, knowing it would be passed along to the ears of Lord Auric Barry.
Since then, the young Lienish lord had continued to decorate the Halfway House with his presence and had made forays down into the Rift. His traveling companions, Mistress Hestrem and Captain Tully, made themselves useful with the rescued travelers from Silverlode. The captain brought healing arts out of the Chameln lands, and Mistress Yolanda played sweet music upon the lute.
Now Lord Auric had offered Tomas Giraud a place in his carriage as far as Lort. Tomas had done other work for Lord Auric and said it had to do with his family. Gael had learned, in conversations over the course of days, a great deal both about Tomas and his family. His father, Frois Giraud, had been a scribe and mapmaker who did not agree with the teachings of the Brotherhood of the Lame God.
Today Lord Auric had guests: a tall fresh-faced man of Mel’Nir with thick brown curls and a quiet, well-controlled voice, and his lady, a pale beauty. This was the Rift Lord and leader of the other Rift Lords, Degan of Keddar and his wife, Perrine of Andine.
Gael settled at a table in shadow, watching the lords—half-hoping she might draw the Lady Perrine’s attention—while Tomas fetched beer from the scullery hatch. Yes, she said as he returned, there was a distinct likeness between Lady Keddar and her sister, Annhad of Pfolben. She kept it to herself that she saw an even stronger likeness to the lady who had foretold her own destiny—and she deliberately asked Tomas what he knew of the unmarried Strett daughter, Pearl of Andine. Tomas Giraud knew so many things of this sort that she had teased him about it, saying
scribe
was another word for
gossip.
Tomas had a serious way with him. Gael found herself sharply aware of the deep tone of his voice and the way his thick dark hair fell over his broad forehead. He seemed pleased to seek out her company; yet somehow he was not like Jazeel or Lady Hestrem, who, despite their pleasantness as companions, had sought for information
through
rather than
of
her.
“Pearl of Andine is unmarried,” he said, “and occupies the family home, Cannford Old House, in the center of the Rift. Some say this lady, Mistress Pearl, is the most beautiful of the three sisters. She is a teacher to the daughters of the Rift Lords.
She is a healer, and it has always been rumored that she is versed in magic.”